


Glances and Glares

by tallerthanaffliction



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Angst, F/M, I wrote this during class at 8 AM so I'm sorry, Post-Book 2: The Wicked King
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2019-11-27 23:31:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18200471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tallerthanaffliction/pseuds/tallerthanaffliction
Summary: ** Post-TWK **He felt that he would surely drown in the silence between them.





	1. Silence

Jude shrugged on her jacket, opened the door, and walked out without sparing a glance back at Cardan, still splayed out on the bed behind her. They’d been doing this since the week after Jude had returned to Faerie, over a month ago. They still hadn’t “gone all the way,” as humans said, but they’d done everything but, over and over. And they didn’t talk before, during, or after — that was Jude’s condition. The most Jude said was “yes,” but Cardan insisted on saying Jude’s name during. She hated it. It reminded her who she was with, what she was doing. She never said his name.

Sometimes he called after her, when she left, begged her to listen to his explanation for what he had done, to _just stay_ for a few minutes. She always slammed the door in his face. Today he stayed silent, said nothing as she walked out. As soon as she left, he felt a familiar emptiness well up inside him as it occurred to him that this might be all he ever got of Jude. Maybe, he reasoned, it was all he deserved, but that didn’t mean he would give up without a fight. Not this time.

—

An hour later, after bathing and dressing in her chambers, Jude sat straight on her throne. She had caught herself starting to recline, to relax into it, but suspected she would resemble Cardan’s careless posture and quickly righted herself. She had come back to find that she had her own throne, one of many apologies Cardan had attempted to offer. Apologies she had ignored, rejected. Now she sat, obsessively dreading his arrival. She was his queen, and the people knew that, but she had refused to pretend solidarity or true companionship with him. Let his subjects — their subjects — think what they would. Sharing his chambers was the last thing she would do.

Cardan arrived, smiling arrogantly, a smile Jude saw right through. _Stop,_ she told herself sharply. _Stop knowing him._ She knew it was impossible, of course, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try. She hated herself enough for the things they did in bed. She certainly didn’t want to care enough to notice his facial expressions, to analyze his mood.

Cardan inclined his head to her as he sat down. She didn’t return the gesture.

“Having a good evening, Jude, dear?”

This was new. He usually knew to leave her well enough alone, but tonight, something in him was brave. Daring. Stupid.

She shot him a death glare which, from Jude, could really mean death, but she said in a sickly sweet tone, “not particularly. And you, _my lord?_ ” She stressed the words, the closest she could come to spitting them in his face without letting their subjects know _just_ how wrong things were between them.

“A beautiful evening,” he said softly, gazing at her. “I spent much of it in good company.” Jude tensed, eyes flashing, daring him to say more. Even as she reacted in revulsion, memories of all they’d done that evening flooded her, and revulsion was truly not what she felt.

“You know, Jude,” Cardan continued, “you don’t need to call me ‘my lord.’ You’re my wife. My queen.” _My equal_ , he tried to convey without saying the words. He wasn’t sure just how far he could push her, how personal he could make the conversation, especially with the tension visibly running through her body. He knew she would prefer not to be talking to him at all.

Jude laughed, a fake, high pitched sound, and said “I suppose old habits die hard, my lord.” Cardan dropped the subject.

He managed to stay silent for at least an hour after the exchange, for which he was unduly proud of himself. He didn’t know what made tonight different, but the desire to talk to her, to push her until something, anything changed between them was burning, unbearable. After an hour, he finally gave in to the urge.

“You look lovely tonight,” he said, and she did — lovelier than ever, as she did every day.

Jude turned to look at him. “Do you have a death wish tonight, my lord?” she asked, too quietly for anyone but him to hear.

Maybe he did.

“I have other wishes,” he replied, avoiding the question. “I wish we were in my chambers. I wish you were—“

“Enough,” she hissed. Cardan smiled sadly.

“More than anything, I wish you would forgive me.”

Jude was silent for several moments. Then she stood from her throne and walked out of the room.

—

Cardan followed her to her chambers, beyond caring what she did to him for it. He stopped at the door, waiting for her to slam it in his face, but she left it ajar behind her, an invitation for him to enter.

He stepped over the threshold into her rooms only to have her shove the door closed behind him, bracing a hand beside him as she wrapped the other around his neck. She pushed him back into the door, eyes cold.

“You want me to forgive you, Cardan?” she asked smoothly, hand tightening on his throat. “You want me to tell you it’s okay? That I’m not mad any more, that I understand why you exiled me? That I know you’re sorry? I do know you’re sorry. I know you regret it, that you had your reasons, that you wish there had been another way. I know all of that, and it doesn’t matter. It will never matter. I will never forgive you for the months I spent away from my home, Cardan. Never. I will never forgive you for the clothes I had to wear, the mortal work I had to do, the agony of spending every moment wishing I was here. You wish more than anything for my forgiveness? I wish more than anything that I never had to see your despicable face again. I remember what it is to hate you, Cardan, and I will never forget. Don’t let the fact that I let you touch me make you think otherwise. I’m using you, and you’re letting me, and we are _nothing_ more than that.”

Cardan swallowed hard, with some difficulty, due to the hand around his throat. Without another word, she released him and turned away.

“Get out,” she said softly, the anger, the hatred gone from her voice, replaced with emptiness. “Now.”

He did as she said, slipping out quietly, rubbing his throat. In the hall, he stopped, leaned against the wall, tried to process what she had said, the way she felt. He thought he could hear some important part of himself breaking.

—

Three days later, she came to him again.  
This time, he bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood to keep from crying out her name. And afterwards, he didn’t beg her to come back, to hear him out.

He felt that he would surely drown in the silence between them. But if this was all she ever gave him of herself?

Cardan would take what he could get.


	2. Pretending

Cardan liked to pretend. He had started pretending a few days after Jude had told him in no uncertain terms that she would never forgive him. The words still haunted him, but he tried not to think about it. Now, he pretended.  


Now, when she left, she never slammed the door. Instead, she closed it far too softly, slipping out with barely a sound. So now, when she left, Cardan pretended. He pretended she hadn’t slipped out at all, that her warm, mortal body still pressed against his, that he could feel her heart beating quickly against his chest. More than anything physical, he pretended he could talk to her.  


He always pretended he could talk to her.  


There was so much he wanted to say. He wanted to brag about having threatened Locke into treating Taryn better. He wanted to discuss the inner workings of the court, things she used to have to force him to listen to her explain when all he wanted was to drink and forget he was king.  


He hated himself for ever spending a moment wishing she would stop talking to him. For not spending every moment of his life craving her voice so madly that he could barely breathe, the way he did now.  


His favorite scenario to pretend was her forgiveness, of course, because it was the least realistic. That didn’t stop it from playing out hundreds, thousands of times every day in his head. “I understand why you did it” and “we’re okay now” and “you’re forgiven, Cardan” over and over and over until he couldn’t think of anything else. He pretended everywhere, in bed, at revels while drinking more than ever, while sitting on his throne with Jude beside him, lighting up the room. The world.  


The pretending didn’t help.  


—  


Jude’s own brand of pretending had gone on for so long that it barely registered any more. She couldn’t deny that it had gotten more extreme since her… confrontation with Cardan, though. _Her_ favorite pretend scenario was the one where it hadn’t affected her, where she didn’t give a damn, didn’t care at all about the stricken look on his face, the way he had quietly slipped out of her chambers, the fact that she could hear him lingering in the hallway afterward, palpably feel what she’d done to him.  


She especially liked to pretend that there was no part of her that thought that maybe, just maybe, she had made a mistake.  


It was hardest to pretend when she was with him, in his bed or beside him on their thrones. She knew there was a simple solution for the first part of this problem; stop sharing his bed. And she tried. She had, at one point, gone a week without visiting his chambers, but it felt like she was burning from the inside out, and when she finally came to him, she had never shown him so much need, something she saw as a weakness, something she hated in herself. She had pinned him down, holding his hands against the bed as she kissed and bit and scratched her way down his chest. Then she had pleasured him, but she had not let him touch her when she so desperately needed it that night, denying herself her own pleasure in some kind of sick punishment for breaking, for going back to him.  


She hadn’t tried to stay away again.  


—  


Today was not a good day for Jude. She had had nightmares of the undersea and woke up in a cold sweat, afraid and furiously, _furiously_ angry. Nothing made Jude angrier than her own fear.  


The day did not improve. Seeing Taryn, and seeing Taryn _happy_ and happy with _Locke_ always did little to improve her mood, and throughout the day she felt her anger growing. She mused that there must be something about isolating herself completely, cutting ties in one way or another with everyone who had ever cared for her, and having no healthy outlet for her feelings that made emotions more difficult to manage. Jude was fuming by the time she arrived in the throne room that night, itching for a fight. She wanted to fight with Cardan, but they hadn’t spoken a word to each other in three weeks, she realized with a start. And anyway, she didn’t think it would do wonders for the nagging, guilty part of her to hurt him further. She wanted a fair fight, the mutuality she used to find with him, but from the way he had looked at her every day for these past weeks, she knew that wasn’t what she would get.  


Still. The devastation that flashed across his face when she walked in, the look she had grown used to, the failure to school his expression into one of neutrality, or cold pleasure, or cruelty, grated on her nerves. She wanted to yell at him, to scream that he should know better than the show his feelings, than to have them at all.  


She knew she’d only be yelling at herself.  


—  


Cardan, who had spent his life pretending to feel cruel pleasure rather than dull pain, knew exactly what he was doing. He had his best intentions not to provoke her, to leave her alone for the rest of her life if that was what she wanted, but he couldn’t help himself when he saw her stormy expression on her face as she strode in. She was beautiful, and he wanted her to take whatever she was feeling out on him. It would mean she spoke to him, even if it was more yelling than speaking, even if it was angry and cruel.  


He had decided to take what he could get, and so he would.  


He glanced at her as she settled beside him, the first time he had dared to do even that in weeks. And, to his shock, she glanced back, face cold, anger palpable. It wasn’t a glare, exactly — he felt like she was sizing him up. The fleeting thought crossed his mind that she had something she wanted to say to him, but he dismissed it quickly. It was dangerous to think these things of reality, easier by far to pretend.  


And pretend he did.  


In Cardan’s mind, Jude turned to him. In his mind, she did glare, and spat out, “you’re the high king, and all you can do is give me pathetic looks and wish for my forgiveness?” Or, “sitting beside you every day makes me sick,” or, “when you tire of gazing at me like an animal I’ve wounded, perhaps you could do something useful with your time.”  


In Cardan’s heart, Jude told him what had happened to make her angrier than usual. She explained the coldness of her glance, why she deigned to look at him now when she so rarely would. In his heart, she opened up even the tiniest piece of herself to him.  


In reality, Jude did none of these things. In reality, Jude turned back to face the room, and she did not turn to him again for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this chapter's boring. I promise this is going somewhere!


	3. Doors

Four weeks had passed since they’d last spoken. Whenever Cardan overheard Jude speaking to someone else, he thought he would burst from the relief her voice brought him. He watched her only out of the corner of his eye, never looking at her directly, certainly not daring to attempt eye contact. She visited his rooms every day lately, and he lived for the rare moments when small noises forced themselves from her throat, the moments when he got to hear her.  


And then, one day, so suddenly that he thought he must be dreaming, she spoke to him.  


He had been going down on her, making it last as long as he could, drawing it out to prolong the time she spent in his bed, under his ministrations. Doing his very best to convey feelings with his fingers and tongue that he didn’t dare vocalize. It was only when he felt her insistent hands in his hair, pulling him up her body, that he reluctantly stopped. That was when she spoke to him.  


“Cardan,” she breathed, and it was everything he had been waiting to hear for the past month and more, and he was terrified. Cardan had a moment of total, all consuming fear that she hadn’t even realized they hadn’t spoken in weeks, that he truly meant so little to her that the absence of his voice didn’t register while the absence of hers tore him to shreds.  


Then he looked into her eyes.  


The look on her face, the fear and tension and almost-anger, told him that she knew exactly how long it had been, that she knew what it would do to him to speak now.  


“Jude,” he said softly. “Jude.”  


Then she kissed him, kissed him with some sliver of feeling that hadn’t been there in a long, long time. She kissed him as though it was _him_ she wanted to be kissing, and that was everything. He felt in her kiss that no matter what he was to her, no matter how much she might hate him, no matter that she was using him or that she would never forgive him… she had missed his voice, too.  


And he felt the moment something changed, the moment she realized herself and withdrew all feeling, shoving it into whatever dark hole in her mind she used to compartmentalize anything that could touch her. She pulled away, and he saw only a flash of apology on her face before she dressed and walked from the room.  


The door closed behind her, but she neither slammed it nor shut it so softly that he could feel her shame. It closed, and he felt something inside himself open.  


Cardan felt hope.  


—  


She wanted to kick herself for speaking to him. She wanted to be crueler than ever to make up for it. She wanted to be unkind to herself, unkind to him, and unkind to all of faerie in punishment for what she had done, for an instant of not-quite-vulnerability.  


But she couldn’t. She felt lighter than she had in weeks, and she was terrified of how desperately she had wanted to talk to him, of how she had to silence herself by kissing him because otherwise she would have talked and talked through the rest of the night and for days afterward. She wanted to tell him she found out how he had threatened Locke for Taryn, how she appreciated that more than any apology he had tried to give since her return. She wanted to tell him about the nightmares, about how every time she thought she was done with the trauma of what had happened in the Undersea, the nightmares got worse. And then there were the little things. She wanted to tell him about the hilariously unflattering drawing Oak had made of her the last time she visited. She wanted to express that she was worried about Vivi, who wasn’t taking Heather’s absence well, for all that she tried to put on a brave face. She wanted to thank him for the throne, for something to make her feel legitimate no matter what her subjects thought of their mortal queen.  


At the same time, she wanted to stay silent. It had been grueling and painful and _simple_ not to talk to him these past weeks. It had saved her from trying to figure out how to approach him after all she had said to him a month ago.  


For now, though, Jude shoved those feelings and desires deep, deep down, and headed to the throne room, for once not bathing first, beyond caring if his scent lingered on her. She was his queen, after all, no matter what else they were or weren’t to each other.  


—  


Cardan sat down on his throne next to Jude’s, and he could smell it on her, what they’d been doing less than an hour ago, their mingled scents. He felt it like an apology. In his mind, Jude had chosen to keep his scent on her to convey that she was less ashamed of what they’d done, that she hated herself even a fraction less viciously for it than usual.  


He knew this wasn’t a realistic fantasy, but then again, most of his pretending wasn’t realistic. Still, he found that he didn’t want to pretend right now, that the reality of her having spoken to him was a light flooding the hollow parts of himself. That it was enough, or close to it.  


He didn’t speak, didn’t turn to her, kept his face impassive as he watched his subjects, but he knew that something had changed. Maybe the change was slight, but some part of Jude was… softer than it had been. He almost laughed at the thought of something about Jude being soft, but he knew it was true. Something had shifted, and Cardan would do everything in his power to keep it that way. He wouldn’t appear desperate, wouldn’t grovel at her feet for her to speak again, something he found himself longing to do. He wouldn’t talk to her or look at her for more than a moment, and he would school his expressions always into neutrality to avoid provoking her. And maybe, if he gave her no reason to believe he was pressuring her, she would give him something else. Another word, glance, gesture. Anything was enough.  


It had to be.  


—  


Jude was unsettled, to say the least, by Cardan’s reaction. She had expected her one word to him to have opened the floodgates, for him to act as though she had forgiven him, or at least as though he had a chance at forgiveness. Instead, he sat silent, face stony, not even glancing at her. Until, that is, she caught his slight glance in her direction, almost imperceptible, and it hit her.  


He was reacting like this, with dispassion, pretending she had never spoken, because he thought she would punish him for showing her how he felt. He was taking his lead from her, and she had shown him nothing but distance. She had so much control over him that he acted, even now, to please her.  


She felt powerful.  


She felt ashamed.  


She still meant what she had said, that she would never forgive him, but neither could she let him become colder. _For our subjects_ , she told herself, _to keep them from his cruelty_ , but she knew better. And besides, he was fair — well, fair for Cardan — to his subjects now, whether in apology to her or out of a genuine increase in goodness she did not know.  


Still, some part of her that remembered what it had been like to be young and allow herself the full range of her feelings rebelled against the thought of leading Cardan to close himself off further. She remembered the rare moments when he had been open with her and, though she knew she may never allow herself to have those moments with him again, a softer part of her that she kept under lock and key needed to preserve that possibility of openness.  


Jude reached across the gap between their thrones and took his hand.  


—  


Even the faeries in the hall turned to gape as their queen took the hand of their king. There had been murmurs throughout Elfhame for weeks, no one understanding why the High King had married a mortal, and married one who so clearly wanted nothing to do with him. Cardan had heard these murmurings and done everything in his power to make it clear that the Queen was his equal, that any insult against her, for being mortal or for anything else, was an insult against the crown. Still the people of Elfhame murmured. Still they disrespected their queen.  


But now, Cardan felt something growing, blooming inside him as he felt the weight of Jude’s hand in his, as his people witnessed a moment he did not yet understand but would cherish, whatever came next. The feeling expanded outward, and he knew that flowers around Elfhame were probably blooming at this moment, was grateful that they were indoors and Jude couldn’t see the evidence of how she was affecting him. Cardan brushed his thumb gently, tenderly over the back of Jude’s hand, and she did not pull away.  


For the rest of the night and into the early hours of morning, they sat with their hands entwined and did not speak. Did not smile, did not give any other indication of the calm that seemed to have settled in both of them.  


When Cardan felt his eyes begin to grow heavy, he reluctantly stood up, not releasing Jude’s hand. She stood with him, growing tired as well, and hand in hand they walked from the throne room.  


She did not release his hand when they left the room, did not let go when they reached his chambers, and held tight as she slipped in after him, shutting the door behind her.  
When Jude finally released Cardan’s hand, it was only to strip down to her underwear and slip under the sheets of his bed. He followed suit, entirely in awe, so shocked that his hands fumbled at the buttons on his clothes. He slid into bed beside her and turned to face her for the first time that night.  


“Jude,” he said, bravely, hoping beyond hope that she had come too far to turn back now.  


“Cardan,” she replied, and they stayed that way for quite some time, staring at each other, the light of the rising sun filtering in.  


Finally, Jude turned onto her back and murmured, “just for tonight.” Then her hand found his once again, and within moments, she was asleep.  


Cardan lay awake for hours, thumb stroking Jude’s hand, mind whirling. How had they gotten here? He would have given anything to know, even for one moment, what went through Jude’s mind. Eventually, Cardan decided that he would do all he could to enjoy these moments, enjoy the warmth radiating from her body under their shared sheets, enjoy the feeling of her hand in his, enjoy her mere presence, something he was so rarely granted.  


This was far more than he had expected from her, and yes, he would enjoy it.  


—  


Jude slept, and when she did, it was free of nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been brought to my attention that this fanfic doesn't really have a plot. So I just wanted to let you all know that it will continue not to have a plot! I only care about angst and how dramatic these characters are! Anyway I hope you enjoyed.


	4. Cruelty

Jude lied when she said it was just for that night. Granted, she had lied to herself as much as to Cardan, but it was a lie all the same. She went home with him from the throne room, from revels and meetings, every night in the week afterward, realizing she could only sleep restfully when she slept next to him. They never touched beyond holding hands, though she could tell he ached to do so, see the fleeting pain on his face when she situated herself as far away from him on the bed as she could. She knew he wanted to go back to that night they had married, when they slept tangled in each other for the first and only time.

It had begun occurring to Jude, recently, that she had never addressed that night. Never had she explained her murder of his brother, never apologized for not telling him sooner. And he seemed to hold no anger towards her for her actions, not any more. She wanted to ask him why, but she was terrified that once she did, once she let on that she cared whether he resented her, there would be no turning back.

Jude had an inventory in her mind of every word they had said to each other over the past week. The night after she had first spoken his name, they had some semblance of an actual conversation.

“Cardan,” she had sighed as she slipped her hand into his from across the bed, “your fingers are cold.”

Cardan had been silent for a moment, clearly shocked that she had spoken, before laughing softly. 

“I’m sorry, my queen, for this grievous slight.”

Jude had snorted. “Forgiven.”

That had been the extent of the conversation, but it was enough to make Jude smile as she fell asleep, a rare event with the stress she was under as queen. She had to admit, though, that Cardan had stepped up — he shouldered his share of the responsibility with no complaints. Sometimes she missed his complaints, a part of how desperately she still missed talking freely with him.

The second conversation they’d had two days ago, right after waking up. 

“Jude,” Cardan had said, a slight tremble in his voice. “May I touch you?”

They had done nothing physically intimate since they began sharing a bed, as if the intimacy of that alone overrode all other needs, but Jude had missed it, missed his lips on her breasts and his fingers inside her. 

“Yes,” she had replied, cringing at the eagerness in her voice, still hating herself for showing that she wanted him. “You may.”

He did, and it was better than it had ever been between them, as though sleeping in bed together had heightened their need for each other. And afterward, she waited longer than she ever had before leaving — still only a few minutes, but she knew what it would mean to him.

The tiniest, most dangerous part of Jude had begun to emerge, the part that told her that maybe it wouldn’t mean the destruction of all she had worked for to show Cardan an ounce of vulnerability, a sliver of care and affection. The part that urged her to share bits and pieces of herself with him, to expand the cracks in her emotional armor. 

Jude was terrified.

—

Cardan would never, _never_ tire of hearing Jude speak to him. Every time a soft word slipped from her mouth while they lay in bed at night, he felt something in him mend. Some aspect of the way she looked at him now was different, and he thought he felt the smallest bit of warmth from her, of care. For the first time, he dared to hope that though she would never forgive him, they might one day reach a place akin to where they had been before he had exiled her. He wasn’t bold enough to hope for more than that.

That night, a week after she had first slept in his bed, Cardan felt brave. Daring. Stupid. And so, as Jude slipped beneath the covers on the side of the bed opposite him, Cardan spoke.

“Can I hold you tonight, Jude?” he asked softly. He knew the risk he was taking even by asking, but the burning desire to feel her chest against his, to wrap his arms around her, was too much to resist.

The risk did not pay off.

“Don’t do this, Cardan,” she replied, warning in her voice. “Let’s just go to sleep. It’s this, or I sleep in my own chambers.”

Cardan felt his anger rising. Not at her denial of his request — she had every right to refuse him. No, his frustration was with the warning, the fact that she so clearly thought that even the fact of his asking was a challenge to her power over him. Power which, he now realized, had become somewhat ultimate over the past month.

And then there was his hurt, hurt at her implication that her presence in his chambers was in some way a gift to him, something she was sacrificing rather than something she wanted as badly as he did. Hurt over the fact that this was what provoked her to say more to him than she’d said in a month.

“Do you think, Jude, that your presence means so very much to me that you can use it as a threat?” Not a lie, but a question. A question to which, he well knew, the answer was yes, her presence _did_ mean that much to him. Losing it _was_ an adequate threat.

“Tell me it doesn’t,” she replied softly, calling his bluff. He had never felt so weak as he did now, as Jude confronted him with how much he craved her.

“You must think me so pathetic,” he said, evading the question.

Her silence was answer enough.

“Get out,” he breathed, throwing her words of a month ago back at her. “Now.”

“Tell me you want me to leave, and I’ll go,” she challenged, a twisted smile on her mouth. She knew he could not, and it only made his anger burn hotter.

Cardan flipped onto his back, stared at the ceiling. They were silent for several minutes before Jude spoke once more.

“I understand now why you said you wanted to tell me so many lies. It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, if you could tell me there was anything you wouldn’t do for even a moment of my time, a sliver of my affection? But there isn’t. You would beg on your knees if I asked you to. You would do all the things you tried to make me do, back when you were crueler. Deny it.”

“I—“ he started. In his anger, he tried, tried so hard to deny any part of it, to deny that he would beg for her, that he would do anything. He couldn’t.

Jude laughed harshly. “That’s what I thought.” 

“When did you become so cruel, Jude, dear?” Cardan asked softly, sadly, anger giving way to something much, much harder to deal with. “Do you relish in hurting me now because I used to hurt you?”

“I told you I wouldn’t forgive you, Cardan. Do you forget so quickly?”

“I’m not asking for your forgiveness. I’m only sorry that I bring out the cruelty in you.”

Jude was silent, a silence that terrified Cardan, who suspected Jude may never speak to him again as she rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. It was then that he realized that despite the hurt he felt, despite the terrible emptiness yawning inside him, despite the viciousness behind Jude’s words, a part of him was glad for the simplicity of trading verbal blows with her, for the fact that they were speaking at all. A part of him had been missing the give-and-take between them, the equality of a fight that he had lost in his desperation for her affection. 

But where did that leave him? He still had the desperate longing for her. He would still do anything for a word of kindness from her lips. He still wanted to hold her.

He was lost.

—

Cardan was right.

Jude _was_ cruel. Crueler than usual, even, to kick him when he was so clearly down. When he, like her, had no one to turn to. When he longed for her. 

She hated herself, and she hated herself for hating herself, and she didn’t know what the right choices were any more. She wouldn’t apologize, but she wanted to say something, to somehow convey that she had the same longing he did, that she wanted nothing more than to let him hold her, to tell him everything, to drop her guard.

That desire was exactly why she had lashed out at him.

She could not afford to let him in.

She would give him something, though, she decided, some small gesture, something of herself. The thought terrified her, made her want to walk out then, but she found that she didn’t want to be cruel to him. She knew the power she had, and she reassured herself that a few kind words to him, a slight opening of her doors, would mean sacrificing nothing. If anything, it would give her more control, make him crave her more. The thought chilled her, but quieted the terrified, sniveling part of herself that wanted nothing more than that power.

“I don’t think you’re pathetic,” she breathed, voice barely audible. “I think you’re braver than I am, to make known what you feel, even if just to me, and even if only sometimes.” 

“Braver than a spy-turned-queen?” Cardan asked, voice cautious but warm, amused. Relieved. “High praise.”

Jude leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek, the closest she would come to a silent apology, then reached for his hand. Minutes passed in silence, and Jude waited. Waited until she thought Cardan was surely asleep, waited to say one of the many things she truly needed to get off her chest, something she did want to apologize for.

“I’m sorry that I killed your brother, Cardan. Not for his sake, but for yours.” She murmured it so, so quietly, begging him not to hear, hoping that she could tell herself she had tried and go to sleep. But she knew from the feeling of his thumb ghosting over the back of her hand that he was awake, that he had heard her.

“He was a bastard,” Cardan muttered sleepily. “You did Elfhame a favor.”

“Perhaps. But I did you an injustice.”

They were silent for several moments before Jude spoke again.

“In the Undersea,” she started, before pausing to swallow, nervous words bubbling up in her throat, pushing their way out of her, leaving her unable to resist making one final confession. “In the Undersea, he made me — made me pretend he was you. Kiss him like he was you. Tell him I was his. I don’t know why I’m telling you, but…”

Cardan’s eyes had shot open, his grip on her hand tightening. “He forced you? To kiss him?” Cardan breathed, eyes cold, staring at the ceiling. 

“He thought I was glamoured. I don’t know if you consider that—“

“I do.” He cut her off, his voice hard. “I do, Jude.”

They were silent for several minutes, Cardan’s grip on her hand not lightening, his eyes not softening, before he spoke again.

“He kissed you against your will, you killed him, and I exiled you for it.” He spoke softly, self loathing clear in his voice. “If I hadn’t understood before why you could never forgive me, I would now.”

_He did worse to you_ , Jude wanted to reply, but though Cardan had mentioned several times the way Balekin had treated him, Jude was certainly not ready to disclose the full extent of what she knew or how she’d gained the knowledge. 

“Thank you,” she murmured instead. His grip on her hand loosened slightly, his eyes grew softer. She leaned over him again, kissing him gently. A part of her wanted to soothe his guilt, even as she knew she should revel in it. 

Cardan deepened the kiss, wrapping strands of her hair around his fingers, tugging on them gently. She felt the soft fur of his tail brush against her thigh. 

“Jude,” he said, pulling back, his voice urgent, as though the words had been burning in him. “Thank you for talking to me again.”

Jude felt as though she could cry. The guilt of the way she treated him rose up in her in waves, eclipsing completely the anger she still felt from the exile. 

“I’m—“ she stopped herself, unwilling still to apologize to him for her distance, to cross that line. Admit her own wrongdoing. “I missed you,” is what she opted for, whispered softly against his lips before she kissed him again. 

She pulled away reluctantly, the need for sleep weighing on her. She rolled onto her back, feeling more than she could process. More than she wanted to let herself feel. Shame, at the way she treated him, at the fact that even now she wouldn’t let him hold her. Wouldn’t even hold his hand after everything she had given him tonight. Anger at herself for allowing things to get this close, this... intimate between them. Sadness, longing, pain driven by his presence beside her, by the self-imposed isolation she didn’t know how to abandon. 

There was hope there, too, and things deeper and infinitely more terrifying. Care. Compassion. Need. All of the things she kept locked away inside herself, rushing to the surface, as though the tiniest crack in her armor, the crack that came from telling him about his brother, had broken the levy and everything she didn’t want to acknowledge inside herself was making itself known. 

She rolled away from him.

“Goodnight, Jude,” he said, voice laced with sadness and longing that mirrored her own.

“Goodnight, Cardan,” she replied, failing to keep her own emotions from her voice, her mask in place. She closed her eyes tightly against the tears that threatened there.

Neither of them slept well.


	5. Bravery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took longer! I both love and hate this chapter, so let me know what you guys think! And thank you so much for your comments, they mean the world to me <3

For the next week, things were _better_. Nothing was _good_ — Jude still rolled away from Cardan each night, refused to let him hold her, and did everything in her power to seal the cracks that had opened in her walls a week ago — but things were better. They were talking to each other. She let him touch her in public, hold her hand, walk into the throne room with her. For a week, things hadn’t felt okay, but they had felt _better_. 

That day, though, one week after their fight, she jerked away when he reached for her hand. He hadn’t seen her all day, which was rare — she had woken and quickly left. When he tried to ask her about it, she shrugged it off, said she was fine, and left it at that. He didn’t push. They weren’t at the point yet where he didn’t think he could easily unravel all the work they’d done. 

He was afraid she wouldn’t come to his chambers that night, but she did. and when she did, something was different. Off. He had never seen her so wanting, not even after they’d spent that week apart. Never known her to show that she needed him, even when some part of him always felt it. Tonight, though, she did show him, threading her hands into his hair and kissing him desperately. He didn’t question it, didn’t want to push her or give her reason to leave, didn’t want to undo the fragile progress they had made. So he kissed her back, pressed her against the wall and ran his hands down her sides, around her back. She closed her eyes and gasped as he brought a hand back up, circled a nipple with his thumb, and he drew back to look at her.

When she opened her eyes again, he saw the faintest sheen of tears sparkling in them, and immediately he stopped his motions.

“Jude,” he murmured, voice laced with concern. He knew it would make her angry, the concern, but he had to make sure she was okay.

It did make her angry.

“I’m fine,” she snapped. Then, slightly softer, “stop looking at me like that.”

He swallowed, tried to school his expression into one of dispassion, and failed miserably. He was too worried and tired and cared too much about her to put up a front right now.

“Can’t,” he said back simply.

“Why did I come here,” Jude asked, hopelessness oozing from her voice, her posture. She said it more to herself than to him, but he answered anyway.

“Because you need something, I think. Something you’re afraid to ask for, afraid to want. And I don’t think what you crave is mindless sex.” He didn’t mention, of course, that sex with Jude was never mindless for him. He knew it was for her.

To his surprise, Jude had no retort, didn’t even turn to leave. Her shoulders slumped as she slid down the wall to sit on the floor, buried her head in her hands. He knelt before her. She wasn’t crying, but he sensed that it was taking everything in her not to.

“Tell me,” he implored.

“I have these—“ she started, then seemed to think better of it. “I have bad days. And most people, when they have bad days, they talk about what happened. They tell someone. And it occurred to me, today, that I have no one to tell. And it’s so god damn stupid,” she said with a harsh laugh, “because you know as well as I do that even if I had hordes of loved ones lining up to listen, I would never tell them. Never give them a single tiny piece of myself. Does that make me strong, or does it make me the biggest coward? Am I anything but a weak, lonely little girl? And I’m telling you this right now, and even for this alone I know I will punish myself, and probably you with me. I will hate,” and here she paused, swallowing hard and lowering her voice, “no, _despise_ myself for giving you the vaguest sense that I am not wholly in control.” She looked up at him, and the pain in her eyes took his breath away. “What does that _make me_ , Cardan?”

Cardan thought of a hundred things he could say. He could beg her to open up to him further, but he knew it would only drive her away. He could provoke her, let her take back the control she so desperately sought by force, make her feel powerful, but he knew that wasn’t what she needed, not really. He could be cruel, hide his vulnerability the way she usually hid hers, throw all the pain she had caused him back at her, but he never would again.

Instead, Cardan did the one thing he thought might soothe even a fraction of her suffering. He paid her back in kind.

“Allow me to tell you what you are, Jude,” he began, “by telling you what I am. I became cruel to cope with being powerless, but you know that part, and I won’t make you listen to my tragic backstory again,” he said with a small smile. “And now, I am less cruel. A long ways off from kind, but nothing of the boy I was. I am High King, and I have the power, so why would I need the cruelty?” Jude nodded in understanding.

“Ah, but Jude, you don’t understand.” She looked at him in confusion. “I don’t have the power. I am High King in title, but I am utterly, wholly powerless. I am less in control of my life than I have ever been, and every day I feel as though I’m crumbling, watching the fortress of unfeeling cruelty I built around myself, the fortress that kept me safe, burn to the ground. I see this happen, and I do nothing to stop the destruction, because _you_ , Jude, _you_ are the destruction, and you are the most sickeningly beautiful ruination. You are the mortal who can bring the High King to his knees. If you wanted me dead, I would beg only that you were the one who wielded the knife, so your eyes could be the last thing I saw. If you wanted me to give you rule of Elfhame, to step away from the throne and spend my days in bed, waiting only to pleasure you when you deigned to come to me, I would accept my role with honor. With pride. Jude, you are impossible. You are everything, and I am disgustingly, exquisitely yours.”

For many moments, they were silent, staring into each other’s eyes. Then, Jude let out the smallest of sounds and reached for him. Cardan wrapped her in his arms, savoring every moment of contact, wondering if she would ever let herself be this vulnerable with him again. Wondering how she would punish them both for these gentle moments. Then he put the thought out of his mind and merely held her.

—

Jude pulled away far more quickly than she would have liked. His speech had done much to reassure her that the comfort she received from him tonight would not give him power over her, but she still felt a constant thrum of terror in the pit of her stomach. 

The disappointment in his eyes as she pulled away made her sick. Gone was any joy she felt at his tells of her power. Now that she knew just how ultimate that power was, all she felt was shame at her treatment of him.

Before she knew what was happening, the disappointment in his eyes was replaced with a glimmer of mischievousness, and he surged forward to lift her body in his arms. She squeaked and he grinned, carrying her to the bed and depositing her in a sitting position on the edge. Then he got down on his knees before her.

“We’re already married, Cardan,” she said dryly. “There’s no need to propose.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he said seriously. She had forgotten that proposals of that sort were not faerie custom. “But I am on my knees before you to beg you, _implore_ you to grant me the small request of holding you through the night. I know how it frightens you, Jude, and I don’t say that to shame you — it frightens me as well. But please. Please, Jude, for one night, let me provide you comfort.”

Jude sucked in a breath. She was afraid, but she was also filled with a longing so powerful that she knew in that moment she would not be able to resist it. 

“Yes,” she whispered so, so softly. “Yes.”

Cardan rose to his feet and gently, as if she were an animal to be startled, lay down beside her. She lowered herself into bed, slipping under the covers so they faced each other. She turned to bury her head in his chest and he wrapped his arms around her once more, pressing a chaste kiss to her forehead.

“Jude,” he murmured. “Jude.”

“Thank you,” Jude said quietly. “I’m sorry if I’m… unkind to you tomorrow. Know that however I treat you is nothing compared to how I treat myself.”

Cardan smoothed a hand over her brow. “You’ve sacrificed nothing, Jude. Remember that.”

For a moment, she believed him.

—

Jude slept better than she had in months. Since the last time she’d slept in Cardan’s arms. Maybe longer.

—

Cardan didn’t sleep. He didn’t want to waste a moment of Jude in his arms. He watched her all night, pressed kisses to her hair, ran his hand down her arms, her sides. He wasn’t sure if he would ever get this opportunity again. So he merely rested, treasured what time he had to comfort her, hoped that his motions would ease her sleep, the nightmares he could too-often sense, however hard she tried to hide them. He hoped she would tell him about them one day, thought maybe it was what she’d started to say earlier. But until she was ready, all he could do — at least for this one, sacred night — was soothe her through them, try to scare them away.

When she woke the next afternoon, he made no effort to pretend he’d been sleeping. He gazed at her, stroked her hair as she woke. Waited for her to bolt out, to punish them both.

Instead, she blinked up at him, the soft comfort of sleep still lingering on her face.

“Hello,” she said simply, face going blank.

He had dreaded this moment all night.

“Hello,” he replied. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes. And now I’m… afraid,” she said haltingly, not breaking eye contact with him.

“I know. Do what you must to cope with it.”

Jude’s eyes flashed in anger. “Don’t be a masochist.”

“To be hurt by you, Jude —“

“And don’t wax poetic,” she snapped. “Just — let me figure this out.” She finally pulled out of his arms, then, and rolled on her back, buried her face in her hands.

So he did. Cardan stayed silent, lay still, didn’t move to touch Jude when he so desperately wanted to, didn’t speak.

He had never intended to let himself want anything — anyone — this badly. He was surprised by how painful it was. He should have known.

—

Jude’s pride and fear, the colder, closed-off parts of her, were waging war against the part of her that liked this. Liked _him_. A piece of her screamed to run, to get out before things got worse. Before she started to care more.

But she didn’t _want to._

__

__

Instead, she shut her eyes tight against the urge to hurt him, to hurt herself.

Instead, she rolled back towards him, eyes still closed. She didn’t need to see to find his lips, after all, so she did, kissing him viciously, pouring the war raging inside her into it.

He kissed her back helplessly, and she knew he was drinking in every moment she stayed in his bed. She didn’t know how long she would be able to put off the inevitable, the leaving, the hating herself. Already she could feel it kicking in. But even as panic threatened to overcome her, she kept kissing him, refused to let her fear win. Maybe she was tired of feeling alone.

Maybe she wanted to give in.

She ran her hands up Cardan’s chest, under the shirt he’d fallen asleep in, latched her hands onto his shoulders and softly bit his lower lip.

“Cardan,” she said against his lips. “I want... I want,” she said breathlessly.

“What do you want, Jude?” he asked, and in her name Jude heard all that he had told her last night, all that she was to him.

“I want to stay,” she said in a rush, a flood of bravery hitting her all at once. “I want to stay all day and be held by you again at night. I want to stop feeling like I’m falling apart. I want to be here.”

The world seemed to slow around them as he looked at her, no judgement in his face, an openness and longing that hurt Jude to see. Marks of his desire, his need for her. A stunning display that took her breath away.

“And will you?” he asked, no hint of judgement in his tone.

She was afraid.

She was brave.

“For now, Cardan, I will. For now.”

It was all she could give him.


	6. Wonder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SOOO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG!!! I had finals in school and I've been working since summer started but it's finally here! I'm thinking there will be one or two more chapters after this, probably just one, so we're nearing the end! Thank you so much to everyone who has left nice comments and kudos, I love you all <3
> 
> Oh, also! I'm changing the rating from mature to explicit because of this chapter, just wanted to warn you guys!

Cardan’s nightmares weren’t like Jude’s. For one thing, his were few and far between, as he spent so many of his nights too drunk to dream. His nightmares were also loud. Disruptive. Screaming. They used to terrify him, not for the content but for the very act of having them. He was afraid that he would wake Balekin, would be punished for the sound — it had happened before.

Now, he didn’t have Balekin to fear, but he still felt the familiar panic rise in him as he awoke, sweating and hoarse from screaming.

The panic abated slightly as he recognized Jude kneeling before him, lightly stroking his arms, back, hair.

“It’s okay,” Jude was murmuring. “It’s just a nightmare, I have them too, you’ll be okay.”

Cardan knew it was a risk, but he needed her, reached for her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Jude let him lay his head in her lap, stroked his hair gently back from where it clung to his forehead.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, voice as soft as Cardan had ever heard it. “You don’t have to.”

Cardan shook his head, felt Jude’s fingers run through it as he did. “Not right now.”

Jude’s fingers kept moving through his hair and she pressed a delicate kiss to his forehead. “Do you think you can go back to sleep?”

Cardan nodded and closed his eyes, hoping beyond hope that Jude would let him stay in this position, at least for a little while. He had never felt safer than he did now, head in her lap, her hand on his brow. This was the home he had never known he needed.

“Jude,” he whispered as sleep crept up on him.

In that moment, he knew that he was about to ruin everything, everything he had worked for, everything he needed now and always, and there was not one thing he could do to talk himself out of it.

“Yes?”

Cardan was shaking.

“I love you.”

What broke Cardan in the moments that followed his admission was not that she left, but how. She left with sadness, rather than anger, defeat, rather than revenge. She left slowly, moving his head off her lap with gentle motions, and she closed the door softly behind her. She left quietly, when he wished she would have screamed.

She did not return that day.

Or the next.

Or the next.

—

A week passed before Cardan had enough.

Yes, he could admit that he had messed up. That what he’d done had been too sudden, too quick and daring and bold. That he had wounded her, made it impossible for what they had been developing to continue in the same way.

And yet...

The way she treated him — and, he hoped, the way she treated herself — had begun to shift over the weeks before his admission. She had grown ever so slightly more open. She was still the Jude who killed his brother, the Jude who would never forgive Cardan for exiling her, but there was… something else. A speck of vulnerability that Cardan wanted to seize on, not to exploit but to nurture.

The fact that Cardan loved Jude had been both shocking and obvious. It had taken him by surprise both that he loved her and that he had not realized it sooner.

It was because Cardan loved Jude that he couldn’t let her do this again, let her isolate herself, pull away from him and pretend there was nothing between them, that all she felt was hatred. He knew there was a solid, distinct chance that she did truly hate him, but she felt far more for him than that. He knew she craved the openness they had shared over the past few weeks, that she needed it as much, if not more, than he did.

Cardan knew, too, that he needed Jude. He needed, craved, her presence in his bed, in his life, on the throne by his side. He had long since lost the ability to do without her biting remarks, the way she looked at him, glared at him. He loved her, and he needed her, and he knew she needed him, whether or not she would ever admit it.

All of this was why, that night, a week after he had told her he loved her, Cardan visited Jude’s rooms. He knocked cautiously, nervous but resolute. He heard her footsteps a moment before Jude opened the door.

She looked at him for a long moment before sighing and stepping back.

“Come in,” she said, sounding resigned.

“Jude—“

“I know, Cardan,” she said, cutting him off. “It’s been a week, and—“

He cut her off right back.

“Listen to me, Jude,” he said, taking her hands in his. She didn’t jerk away. “Please. Just listen. I can no more watch you do this to yourself again than I can allow you to do it to me. I won’t suffer another week of silence between us, and I won’t be punished for my honesty, and for something that needed to be said. I love you, Jude. I do. And that won’t change if you prevent me from seeing you, and it won’t change if you isolate yourself, and it won’t change if you lash out at me. I love you. And I understand how you want to hide from this, because I feel that desire as well, but fight it. Please, Jude, fight it, because you told me once, after that first time, that you were just getting it out of your system, but I now know you were lying. Don’t tell lies that only serve to hurt you, because you taught me that protection does not come from hiding, but from fighting for what you want. I suppose that’s what I am doing.”

All of this was said in a rush, a desperate scramble to get the words out before she interrupted or left, but she stayed quiet, still, kept her hands in his.

“I expect nothing from you, Jude,” he said, voice softer now, slower, “but to let me love you.”

“I don’t know how,” Jude replied, voice barely a whisper. “How do I let you love me?”

“Allow me to show you,” Cardan said with a soft smile, before leading Jude to the bed.

—

In all of Jude’s years in faerie, all of the terror she had endured at the hands of the folk, all the fright of being mortal in a world of immortals, she had never been so afraid as she was when Cardan told her he loved her. Nothing had evoked the sheer depth of feeling in her that those words did, and that scared her most of all — the feeling. The plethora of emotions that flooded through her was earth-shattering, intoxicating, and miserable. She felt torn apart and sewn together at the same time, and she had no idea what to do about it.

She was just as scared now, with Cardan leading her to the bed, but she was also resolute. He was right that she fought, rather than hid. She just hadn’t thought of letting herself be loved as fighting. Love was a weakness, or so she thought. But how could doing something this hard, this terrifying, make her weak?

She put the thoughts, the terror, the urge to run aside as Cardan propelled her gently to sit on the bed. She made herself malleable for once, let him remove her clothes, his hands reverent where they brushed her bare skin. He stripped her of her doublet, her pants, and then her undergarments, such care in his motions and expression that she thought she might never stop seeing it, feeling it.

Cardan pressed on Jude’s shoulders and she lay back on the bed, moving up until her head was on the pillows. He then removed his own clothes and lay beside her.

For a moment, they were quiet, simply listening to each other breathe.

“Do you want this, Jude?”

Until now, Jude hadn’t quite realized where this was going, what Cardan was asking. Now, she was very aware of what was about to happen. Her breathing sped up. Her hands shook lightly against the sheets, and Cardan took them in his.

“You don’t have to, you know. Want this. I would never pressure—“

“Yes,” she breathed, “yes, I want this.” In fact, at this moment, she wasn’t sure if she had ever wanted anything more.

Jude and Cardan had done many things in the bedroom, many things Jude would never tell anyone, things she was occasionally ashamed of but which more often made her feel powerful, devious, reckless and proud. This, though, they had never done. She hadn’t allowed things to progress past fingers and tongues, kisses and caresses, teeth and nails.

Jude rolled toward Cardan. “I want this,” she said, finality in her tone.

Cardan pushed her gently to lie again on her back.

“If you feel pain, even for a moment, you must promise to tell me immediately.”  
“What if I feel pain but I don’t want you to stop?”

“Then I will simply make sure you are as comfortable as possible. I still wish for you to tell me.”

Jude conceded, nodding.

“And,” Cardan continued, much to Jude’s chagrin, “if you need me to stop—“

“Cardan. I will tell you. Can you touch me already?”

Cardan grinned. “As you wish, my queen,” he said, before bringing one hand up to draw lazy circles on her stomach. “Like this?”

“Cardan,” Jude growled, a warning in her voice. “I’m past the point of games.”

Cardan raised his eyebrows. “Already? My powers of seduction are stronger even than I thought.”

Jude couldn’t help but laugh, partially because she was nervous. Cardan blinked and stared at her.

“What?” she asked, suddenly self conscious, acutely aware of how many times Cardan had done this, compared to her grand total of zero. Wondering if he was thinking about her inexperience.

“I haven’t heard you laugh… _truly_ laugh in quite some time. I should like to hear it again.”

Jude felt every part of her soften, and instantly cursed herself for just how deep into this she was. Into him.

“And you will,” Jude said, smiling. “We have time.”

It was a gift she was giving him, the knowledge that she didn’t plan on running, on shutting him out, and she knew it.

Cardan placed a hand on Jude’s breast, circled her nipple with a finger.

“Thank you,” he said.

Jude closed her eyes, basked in the feeling of being touched like this, gently and with love. Basked in the fear it evoked.  
Cardan brought his mouth to her breast, placed delicate kisses across it before flicking her nipple with his tongue. She arched her back slightly, a gesture of silent encouragement, and he scraped his teeth lightly across her skin. His hand he now occupied with tracing paths down her stomach, across her hips, almost — but never quite — between her thighs.

They had barely begun, and already Jude was becoming desperate, desperate to feel his hands and mouth on every inch of her body, desperate for him.

Suddenly, she was aware of how useless she was being, of the fact that she was letting Cardan do all the work while she just lie there, breathing laboriously and fluttering her eyes open and closed.

She moved to touch him, to run her hands over his chest, but he pulled back.

“Let me,” he said. “Just let me touch you.”

She returned her hand slowly to the bed, the chasm of feeling widening inside her, so much emotion welling up that it felt bottomless. For one blissful moment she wondered why she had ever tried to restrain her feelings, when they could feel as heavenly as this.

Then she remembered herself, remembered the fear.

_Let me love you._

She closed her eyes against any part of her that was unwilling to do just that. If nothing else, this night was her gift to both of them, one night of pretending she was a girl who could be loved. Who deserved to be.

Cardan’s mouth returned to her breast, and his hand came up to mirror it, tugging at one nipple at the same time he bit gently down on the other. Jude moaned softly.

Cardan let out a shuddering breath.

“You make the most beautiful noises,” he said against her chest before sucking softly. Jude moaned again.

“Full of flattery today, I see,” she said, breathless.

“I can say nothing that I don’t believe to be true,” he said with a grin, moving his head to trail kisses down her body, across her stomach.

“Gift me with some more truths,” said Jude, her voice grown serious.

“Will you repay me in kind?”

“Yes.”

“When you were crowned queen of mirth and I announced that your face featured prominently in my most frequent nightmare, the nightmare I referred to was of your death.”

His mouth trailed lower when he stopped talking, over her hips, across her abdomen, the tops of her thighs.

“And your nightmare of a week ago?” Jude asked, unsure if she truly wanted to know, but sure that he needed to talk about it.

Cardan looked up, gave her a sad smile. “We will talk about it at a more… appropriate time.”

Jude smiled slightly, admitting that perhaps this was not the ideal time to talk about more serious matters.

Cardan continued. “I liked it when you were able to command me,” he said, a sheepish grin on his face. “And it is an ability you have not lost.”

Jude laughed again at what he was implying, and Cardan’s face lit up.

“Two laughs in one day? I must be outperforming myself.” After speaking, he spread her legs gently, pressed kisses to the insides of her thighs, as high as he could go. Jude’s breathing grew shaky once more, but she sensed that it was her turn to speak, so that Cardan’s mouth could occupy itself in other tasks.

“I’m sure this is a truth you can guess at, but I am very, very afraid.” When Cardan started to pull back, she clarified. “Not of this. No, this I’m excited about. I’m afraid of what you said, and of the way it made me feel.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“Whole,” she breathed. “Fulfilled in a way that I thought only power could.”

“My love is your power, Jude.”

“Then why do I feel utterly powerless? Entirely out of control?”

“Love does that as well, I’ve learned.”

“Was it like this with Nicasia, for you?”

Cardan paused.

“I never loved Nicasia,” he said.

“You told me that you did.”

“I was mistaken. I know that now, because of you. My feeling for Nicasia was a childish desire to have someone who was mine, as no one had ever been.”

“And your feeling for me?”

“My feeling for you is to have you be mine, as well, but also to be yours. It is a desire to see your smile, hear your laugh, and know that something in your life is causing it, regardless of whether it is me. Although,” he said with a smile, “I do prefer it to be me.”

As he spoke, Cardan plunged two fingers inside her, curling them against the perfect spot, a practiced art.

Jude leaned her head back and moaned.

The only things she could have said in response to him would only have darkened the mood. She didn’t know how to be his, or to have him be hers. So, instead, she lost herself in the sensations he evoked, and in feeling his hands on her, in her.

Teasing her no longer, Cardan lowered his mouth to the apex of her thighs, bringing his tongue to her clit. His ministrations were impossibly gentle, licking and sucking without the urgency she usually felt from him. Perhaps this was the first time he had been confident she wouldn’t walk out at any moment; perhaps he knew he had time.

Jude grew closer and closer to the edge.

“Cardan — oh, you’re good at this,” she sighed as he swirled his tongue in a particularly delightful pattern.

“I know,” he said against her, and the rumbling sensation caused her to laugh for the third time that night. She was giddy for the first time in as long as she could remember, giddy with anticipation of what they were about to do, giddy with the heady sensation of being loved and wanted. For all that she was afraid, in this moment, Jude was something akin to happy.

As Jude’s breathing quickened, Cardan added another finger, slowly stretching her entrance and scissoring his fingers inside her. Jude gasped, not in pain but in surprise, and Cardan’s movements stilled.

“Jude—“

“Cardan, if you’re going to stop every time I make a sound, this will take all night.”

“Oh,” Cardan said, resuming his motions inside her. “I plan for this to last all night, dear Jude.”

Jude smiled.

—

Cardan was terrified.

He was utterly, thoroughly afraid.

Afraid that he would hurt her, that she would stand and leave at any moment, but most of all that he would never have this again. That he would never again feel her beneath him, vulnerable, open, and that he would never again be given the chance to show her his love so gently, slowly, as this.

He was also infinitely grateful. Grateful to be given this chance at all, these softer moments alone with the strong, beautiful, powerful woman he loved. Grateful that he had been chosen for her first time, and that he would get to feel her fall apart around him.

With that thought, he redoubled his efforts, speeding up his pace slightly and reveling in the delectable noises she made in response to his motions.

Cardan’s desires were out of control. He wanted her to beg, and he wanted to give her everything she begged him for. He wanted to watch her come undone over and over again. He wanted her so satisfied that she could do nothing but let him hold her into the night.

Maybe she would let him love her, from this night forward, but more likely she wouldn’t. And that was why he resolved to make the most of this night, of the precious moments that comprised her gift to him, a gift he would do well not to squander.

Cardan was afraid, and he was grateful, and he was resolute, and he was about to show Jude what love could feel like.

—

“I’m close, Cardan — oh god, I’m close.”

With those words, Cardan ceased all motion. Jude cried out in frustration, but she knew she was as ready as she would ever be. Cardan had worked four fingers inside her and now found her wetter, most likely, than he had ever felt her.

“Thank you for warning me,” Cardan said, and reached a hand up to stroke her stomach, her thigh, a gesture of approval. Jude was surprised to find that she basked in the praise, craved more of it.

“Are you ready, Jude?”

Jude shivered in anticipation, but she knew that she was ready. That she had never been so ready for anything.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “God, yes, just—“

He cut her off by claiming her mouth in a kiss, leaving her even more breathless than before.

“If I hurt you, tell me,” he reminded her before lining himself up at her entrance.

He pushed in slowly, so, so slowly, and he had prepared her as much as he could, but she still felt pain, gasped with it, and thought that surely something must be going wrong.

Cardan stroked her sides once more, circled a nipple gently as he stilled his motions.

“It’s okay, dearest. I know it hurts. It’s okay.”

Jude closed her eyes and nodded. She focused all of her thoughts not on the pain, but on the fact that he had never called her “dearest.” “Dear Jude,” certainly, but it felt different, more intimate. Loving.

She shuddered again, this time in pleasure at the thought, despite herself.

Cardan slowly, ever, ever so slowly, began pushing into her once more. She didn’t gasp this time, and after several long moments she began to feel… not a lack of pain, but a fullness despite the pain. A pleasurable fullness.

Once Cardan was buried inside her, he stilled, waited for her to move past the point of pain that was too much for him to continue.

“Cardan?” Jude asked, almost tentative.

“Yes?” There was concern in his voice, and love, love, always love.

“Show me.”

“Show you what?”

“How much you love me.” She whispered it.

Cardan smiled, a gentle, vulnerable thing that she saw all too rarely, and pulled back, thrusting into her, still slow but gaining speed when he saw, felt, that she was ready.

Jude couldn’t say that it was a comfortable experience, exactly, or that she would want it to feel like this forever, but it was with Cardan, and it was gentle, and it was kind. It was what she never knew she needed, and she felt some small part of herself begin to heal with Cardan’s gentle motions, his hands stroking her hair as he plunged again and again inside her.

At some point, one of his hands found her clit once more, and then she saw stars, felt the combination of fullness and sensation until she was overwhelmed, until she came undone around him.

He followed soon after, groaning and tangling his long fingers in her hair as he came, pressing soft kisses to the sides of her neck, down her chest, across his stomach as he pulled out of her.

As Cardan fell back into bed beside her, as he pulled her into his arms and kissed the shell of her ear, something clicked into place in Jude’s mind, and it made her want to run, and it made her want to stay.

She loved him too.

—

Cardan knew he would live a long life, if no one succeeded in killing him young, and he knew that he would never again feel the way he felt in this moment, the all-consuming bliss he experienced as he gazed down at Jude, nestled in his arms. For this moment, he pretended she was his. That he was hers. That they could be more than husband and wife, king and queen. That she loved him with all the power and helpless devotion of his love for her.

Of course, it wasn’t true, and he soon came back to reality, though the lingering fingers of bliss still stroked his heart into action, made him as stupid and reckless as he had been a week before.

“Jude,” he said.

“Cardan,” she replied.

There was silence between them for several moments before she said,

“You love me.”

She wasn’t asking, but stating a fact.

“Yes.”

It was all he could say.

Another, longer silence followed before he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, a gentle, fleeting kiss.

“I love you,” he said.

“I felt it.”

It was all he wanted to hear and more, her belief, her admission. The knowledge that he had done something right, that he had gotten his message across as intended.

“Jude,” and here, the blissful stupidity was pulsing to make itself known. “Jude, do you have any idea how beautiful you are? How beautiful you looked below me? How beautiful you will look above me, and before me, if you allow this to continue? You are stunning.”

He wanted to make sure she knew, that after what they had just done she felt beautiful and wanted, and besides, there was nothing he could have done to keep those words of her beauty inside.

“You could say the same of Taryn,” she returned with a smile.

“No,” Cardan answered simply, “I could not.”

Jude buried her face in the pillow in perhaps the cutest gesture Cardan had ever seen, hiding her blush. Her _blush_. Jude Duarte, spy, killer, queen of ice and stone, was _blushing_.

Cardan took that as encouragement, and continued.

“Jude, I beseech you — _beg_ you — not to run from this. You felt my love, in what we just did, so allow yourself to continue feeling it. Allow me to continue showing you,” and here he grinned wickedly, “over… and over… and over.” Cardan stroked his long fingers down Jude’s spine to punctuate his words.

Jude looked up at him, and the cocktail of desire, delight, and determination in her eyes was breathtaking.

“I want it,” she said gently, “I want it all,” and then they were kissing, hard and passionate and fast, so different from what they had just done with its gentle softness, but exactly what they needed.

When they finally broke apart, Jude was panting, flushed, eyes wide with want and need and words she wasn’t saying.

“Let me love you, Jude,” Cardan said, echoing his earlier statement, this time more emphatically, desperate. Everything was going well, and yet he was terrified that her mood would shift, that at any moment she would grow scared and leave.

Jude stroked a hand through Cardan’s hair, gently, sweetly.

“I’m trying. I want this. And so far, I’m letting myself have it. I’m fighting, like you said, fighting to let myself do something hard, to let you in. And I’d say,” she said, smiling, “that I did a pretty good job of letting you in.”

Cardan laughed, delighted.

“Thank you,” Jude said, softly now, “for showing me what love can be.”

Cardan merely kissed her on the head, wordless for once, and for the long minutes that followed, they gazed into each others’ eyes, both wondering at the newness of feeling that accompanied being in love.

They wondered at the feeling through those soft minutes, the sunset making their naked forms glow. They wondered at the feeling through the hours and the sex that followed, as Cardan made good on his promise to ensure he showed her how much he loved her again and again, all night long.

And they wondered at the feeling when the morning light began to filter in, and when they fell asleep wrapped up in each others’ arms, and when Jude didn’t leave.

Jude didn’t leave.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfic I've posted since I was 14, so I'm pretty badly out of practice, but I figured it was worth a try! My tumblr is [here](https://myqueenjudeduarte.tumblr.com), feel free to send me headcanons or prompts or anything!


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